In the food service industry a variety of cabinets have been provided for various purposes. These cabinets include storage, transport and/or busing cabinets, cold cabinets, hot cabinets, refrigerated cabinets, proof cabinets, heat and hold cabinets, warming cabinets, banquet cabinets, etc. Typically, the cabinets stand about 5-7 feet tall, have a depth of about 2-3 feet and come in widths ranging from about 2-6 feet. Both insulated and uninsulated cabinets have been provided, and typically the cabinets have one or more doors opening on the front or back sides.
In these cabinets the food products are usually supported on horizontal shelves arranged vertically from bottom to top within the cabinet. Various types of shelves have been used, these including wire racks, baskets, trays, plate carriers, etc. The shelves are usually supported at opposite side edges thereof on ledges either formed integrally in the sidewalls of the cabinets or attached to the sidewalls of the cabinets. For example, cabinets have been provided with corrugated interior sidewalls wherein the corrugations define a vertical array of equally spaced apart ledges. The ledges also have been formed by angles or pan slides attached to the sidewalls of the cabinet. Although these various types of shelf supports have proven to be effective and successful over the years, there still remains a need for improved alternative means for supporting the shelves in a cabinet. An improved shelf support desirably would be easily removable by a simple manipulation to facilitate removal of the shelf support for cleaning or for shelf height adjustment. Also, an improved shelf support would be relatively economical and easy to fabricate.
In some food service cabinets heated or cooled air is circulated within the cabinet to contact the food to heat or cool the food or to maintain the temperature of the food. In one known type of cabinet an open top of the cabinet is closed by a removable heat transfer unit which is interchangeable with other heat transfer units depending on the particular function to be performed by the cabinet. The heat transfer units which fit on top of the cabinet may be refrigeration or freezer units, warming units or baking units, among others. The heat transfer units typically include an air intake, a fan or fans for circulating air, a heating or cooling device to transfer heat to or from the circulating air, and an outlet for the heated or cooled air. The units are intended to be positioned over and sealed against an opening in the top of the cabinet. The air inlet then communicates directly with the cabinet area while the treated air outlet communicates with a vertically extending duct on the rear wall of the cabinet. The fan or fans draw air from the intake, force it past the heating or cooling device, through the outlet, into the tunnel, and then through many louvers, slots or holes in the duct walls into the interior of the cabinet. In order to hold the heat transfer unit stationary atop the cabinet, latches are provided. It would be desirable to provide interchangeable heat transfer units which are easy to remove from atop the cabinets and which do not require the need for latches to hold the units in place.
Many food service cabinets are provided with a shelf stop on the cabinet doors to prevent forward and rearward shifting of the shelves. These shelf stops may be removable to facilitate cleaning of the cabinet interior. Typically the shelf stops are sheet metal channel members which are punched to form keyholes for mating with pins attached to the inside wall surface of the door. The orientation of the keyhole dictates a top and bottom end of the shelf stop thereby requiring the user to take the time to determine which is the top or bottom end when attaching the shelf stop to the door. It would be desirable to provide an improved means for removably attaching a shelf stop to the inside surface of the cabinet door, as well as other elongate channel members such as posts to inside wall surfaces of the cabinet and which improved means is easy to form in the sheet metal channel members.